Reply #107: Because so many school systems are stuck in an industrial model [View All]

[Recursion]

And, yes, the unions are part of that.

had some job security including getting roughly the same number of classes every semester after I racked up some seniority.

And I'm glad you did. Some people, though, really dislike seniority-based systems. I see some problems with them too, though I have trouble thinking of a way to change them that doesn't bring its own bad consequences.

I was also an officer of the union local, and when someone filed a grievance, we only did what we were contractually obligated to do if we felt the instructor was a bad apple, and told that person if they wanted to fight for their job beyond that, they were on their own.

*shrug* everywhere is different. I went to a pretty bad public school in the deep south. The AFT local was just basically the "old boys' network" (or, rather, "old gals' network") and worked very hard to keep some people in the classroom who really had no business being there, like my science teacher who told me the Sun went around the earth. And they opposed, to take up your question, classroom teachers' writing of curricula. This doesn't mean "unions are bad", this means that just like any other system they can be misused and start to harm the people they're supposed to benefit. Though in fairness, in Mississippi and then in DC where I moved later, race was a 900-pound elephant in the room that poisoned almost anything the schools, unions, or politics touched.